


autoclave

by cynicalRaconteur



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/F, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:39:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicalRaconteur/pseuds/cynicalRaconteur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: How the fuck is she so attractive, she dresses like my grandfather, I want to punch myself in the face: the Newt Geiszler story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	autoclave

 

You work with Dr Helga Gottlieb for eight years before Hong Kong, and if you’re honest, a lot of that time blurs into one big squabble. Once the two of you hit your equilibrium of semi-serious fighting, neither of you were inclined to break the status quo – even if your assistants could only bear it for an average of three months. You think the record is nearly a year, until Helga berated her so caustically for smudging her chalk equations that she was knocked back a few steps right into a puddle of Kaiju Blue. You and Helga got so wrapped up in screaming at each other about Helga’s stupid tape line down the middle of the lab that you didn’t notice her hobbling out of the lab in tears, toxic blood burning through the sole of her shoe.

Yeah, you were pretty ashamed about that.

After a while, even Marshall Pentecost stopped trying to get you to get along. Around the time he adopted Mako Mori, he officially gave up on his top scientists ever getting past the mental age of twelve, and left them to it. And in all those eight years of bickering, only three events really stand out in your head as being pivotal. Four, if you count the first time you met her.

Marshall Pentecost has this thing, you’d call it a knack maybe, for finding people who complement each other. It’s probably a Ranger thing. That’s how he knew to let you and Helga fight it out for the rest of your lives, and that’s how he knew to introduce you in the first place. It didn’t hurt that you were both the top of your respective fields but, you know, whatever.

When you hear that you’re going to be working with a Helga Gottlieb, you think it’s a joke. You can’t believe people are actually still called Helga. Well, okay, your name is _Newton_ and maybe women in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, but come on. _Helga Gottlieb_. You keep picturing a fat blonde Viking woman chasing you with a rolling pin. If she was any more German she would probably spontaneously transform into a pint of beer. This is the best day of your _life_. You keep whispering ‘Helga’ to yourself and giggling. Your colleagues give you strange looks all day. Well, more strange looks than usual.

Then you Google her and you jaw drops so far you’re surprised it stays on your face. She wrote the OS for the Jaeger Mark I. Holy shit. _Holy shit_. You’re not really interested in the Jaeger Programme beyond how many intact Kaiju bits they can bring you, not at that stage, but. _Holy shit_. Now you don’t know what to think.

You go into that meeting in a fuzz of confusion and caffeine, and you’re also kind of late. Maybe like five minutes late. Maybe closer to fifteen. Whatever. Time is relative, we all know that by now.

But that isn’t going to fly with Marshall Stacker ‘Stick up my ass’ Pentecost, so you start apologising for your tardiness before you’re even through the door, Starbucks slopping all over your wrist and breaking up the vivid colour of your ink. Your forearms and shoulders are completely covered by this point, and so is your chest. Your calves and thighs have been lost causes for years. It will be another nine years, when you get the Triple Event backpiece finished, before your entire body is Kaiju, but even this is enough for Marshall Pentecost to despair of you.

You’ve just finished apologising when it occurs to you that you’ve literally turned up to this meeting fifteen minutes late with Starbucks and you have to stifle a laugh. Helga Gottlieb’s head snaps up.

The first thing you notice about her is her hair, which is mainly vanity on your part. Your own hair is sporting the sought-after style ‘Too Poor For The Hairdressers’, and hangs in choppy waves almost to your shoulders when you’re feeling casual. Most of the time you keep it up with a messy bun secured in place by pencils or chopsticks or, on one memorable occasion, a scalpel (and that, kids, is why you should never enter a lab high on insomnia and pumpkin spice lattes). Helga – there’s no way you’re calling her Dr Gottlieb in the privacy of your own head – on the other hand, has perfect hair. The cut is an awful, awkward-length bob that emphasises the sharp bones of her face – not just the cheekbones, but the aquiline nose, knife-like jaw, the pointy chin. Her haircut is terrible, frankly. But her hair is perfect. The line of the glossy black bob is directly parallel to the ground, with not a split end in sight.

Her clothes are poorly-fitting, really. And primarily tweed. She looks a lot like every professor you hated at college and also a lot like every bitchy girl you wanted to hatefuck against a wall. You, on the other hand, look awesome. Probably. You at least definitely are wearing all the required items of clothing needed for polite society, even if they aren’t quite coordinated in a polite way. Your white dress shirt is open almost down to your cleavage, and a black skinny tie hangs limply from your neck. You’re not 100% sure your black skirt doesn’t have monster goo on it, and you’re 100% sure your sneakers do. But that’s fine, you’re a rock star scientist goddess, you are rocking this look.

“Dr Geiszler,” Marshall Pentecost sighs, sounding exceedingly long-suffering. You’re pretty sure this is an act he puts on.

“Yes, hello, I’m here, I am paying so much attention right now. Sir,” you add as an afterthought. Helga snorts derisively. Pentecost sighs.

“This is Dr Gottlieb, the abstract mathematician we discussed. Dr Gottlieb, may I introduce Dr Geiszler, our resident Kaijuologist.”

You could kiss him for saying that with a straight face.

“Dr Geiszler,” Helga acknowledges, crossing the room to shake your hand. She has to switch her cane to her other hand and you have to do the same with your coffee cup, but you manage. “I have read some of your work.” Her tone leaves you in no doubt as to how she views your work. You watch her eyes trace your tats disdainfully, and resist the urge to reach out and muss her stupid hair.

“Thanks,” you reply brightly, “I tried to read some of yours, but it was a bit heavy and jargon-y for me. You might want to lighten up a little, Helga.” You disengage from the handshake and clap her on the shoulder, maybe a little harder than necessary.

“Well,” Pentecost breaks in, “I’ll leave you two to become acquainted with each other.” He begins to move past you, towards the door.

“Woah, wait, hang on a second,” you reach out as if to grab his arm then abruptly change your mind when he turns to look at you. He can be really frightening, Jesus. “What is this?” you continue, recovering your momentum, “Scientist speed dating? You still haven’t told us what we’re meant to _do_.”

Pentecost gives you one of his Looks.

“Work together,” he says, and stalks out of the room.

You don’t even have to look at Helga to know that’s going to be easier said than done.

*

Chronologically, the next thing you really _remember_ from those early years is kind of a sequence of events. You and Helga are fighting about something – probably your untidiness or Helga’s habit of humming while she works – and it’s one of those fights that is _really getting to you_. These happen occasionally, and it pretty much has nothing to do with the subject matter (or the time of the month, thank you very much, you punch anyone who so much as implies that in the face), but sometimes Helga gets really under your skin and really close to making you cry. You cry when you’re angry, which is incredibly embarrassing and something you bet _never_ happens to stupidly British German ice queens.

It’s something about the way she says your name, you know that much. She will only call you Newton, not Newt, and she says it in this clipped, irascible way that conveys just how ridiculous she thinks you are. And she does think you’re ridiculous: your work, your life, even the way you talk, the way you dress. You could probably take it from anybody else, comfortable in the knowledge that you’re smarter than them, but that doesn’t work with Helga. She’s on your level, and she still hates you. It’s kind of awful, if you’re honest.

Both these factors combine to make you snap, slamming your hands down on your work bench and making a kaiju liver tremble ominously.

“Okay, shut the fuck up!”

She does. You can’t tell if she’s shocked, or can see how upset you are, or if she’s just worried that if you bang on the bench like that again, the liver will slide onto her side of the lab.

You’re breathing pretty hard, but you get your words out just fine.

“I swear to God, if you call me Newton again I will do something drastic, okay, my name is _Newt_. It may not be what is letter-for-letter written on my birth certificate but it is my _name_. Not fucking Newton, alright, that makes me sound like a Victorian man sitting under a tree waiting for an apple to fall on me, _which I emphatically am not_.”

You make an expansive gesture to your whole self, and you think you see the corners of Helga’s mouth twitch, and not even in a mean way. You don’t pay it much attention – you’re on a roll.

“And if you aren’t comfortable with calling me Newt for some insane stuck-up reason, then you can call me Dr Geiszler because I know for a fact that I have five whole doctorates more than you, and that means I am owed at least _one modicum_ of your respect!”

About five seconds after your rant finishes, you regret every single word. You don’t even _care_ about all those pieces of paper stuffed in the back of your closet somewhere, you never have cared about them. Why are you being such a dick about this? Helga is going to think you are the lord of douchebags. You resist the urge to drown yourself in ammonia.

“Newt,” Helga says softly. “I was...not aware. I shall endeavour to address you more politely from now on.”

Then she turns back to her chalkboard, which is good because you are blushing firetruck red behind your safety goggles. Asking her to call you Newt was such a mistake – it kind of makes your stomach flip-flop and you can’t believe that’s the option she chose instead of returning to formality. Especially since she hates it when you call her Helga. You’re such a hypocrite, you realise. You are the _worst_.

“I’m still going to call you Helga, if that’s cool,” you venture, not looking up from your dissection.

Helga sighs, and draws a square-root sign with particular force. “There will be no shortening,” she warns, “or ‘cute’ nicknames.”

You laugh a little. “Sure,” you mutter. This is a compromise you can live with.

Only a few weeks later, you’re trying to get the details of a new Category II out of a ranger who reminds you of a caricature of a head jock in a high school. Helga is with you, you’re not sure why. The two of you have become sort of inseparable, and one of you is always at the other’s elbow. Once, Helga’s cane slipped on a damp patch and she grabbed your hand to steady herself. Your heart was in your throat when you thought she was going to go down, like that was the closest you have ever been to a full-blown aneurysm, but also your fingers sort of tingled for like ten minutes after that, so.

She’s with you now, eyeing the ranger with disdain (you don’t have to look to know that). She’s impatient to get back to her math, you can feel that, and you’re trying to hurry it up.

“Look, Ranger, I don’t have time for you to get cold feet-”

The Ranger steps into your space, and you stutter to a halt, feeling that familiar sharpening of your awareness you get whenever a guy gets too close. You finger the mace can discreetly hooked onto your bracelets.

“And I don’t have time for your kaiju fetish shit Ms Geiszler, so if you would kindly-”

“I think you’ll find,” Helga interrupts, consonants clipped and _perfect_ , “that the proper form of address is Dr Gesizler. Now, if you would please give Dr Geiszler the information she needs so that she can continue her important work on kaiju biology, I’m sure we would both be much obliged.”

And, unsurprisingly, he does. Slowly, he gives you everything he can remember about the attack, little personal details that the sensors and cameras can’t tell you. He seems to think you should be taking notes but haha, joke’s on him, you’ve never forgotten a single detail about the kaiju in your life. It helps that your body doubles as a reference book, of course. Even when you want to reach back and thank Helga somehow (hold her hand? Pat her shoulder? You aren’t sure of the correct body language for ‘ _you’re quickly becoming the only human being I can trust_ ’), you remember the details faithfully, and thank him. He scuttles off, glad to escape your lab partner’s withering glare.

As the two of you walk back to the lab, sticking close to each other in wet patches so Helga has a back-up plan for slippage, you singsong quietly into her ear, “You said my work was important.”

“And I am regretting it further every minute,” Helga snaps back peevishly, not deigning to look at you.

“Ooh,” you say, “high and mighty mathematicians, let us bow before you. C’mon Helga, you can’t even _say_ kaijuology. Go on, I dare you.”

Her lips thin. You know she won’t do it because she dislikes words without clear logical etymology – she won’t even say ‘television’ without grimacing. It’s hilarious.

“I refuse to dignify that ridiculous word by voicing it,” she says instead.

“It’s not ridiculous, it’s a portmanteau.”

“I doubt you can even spell ‘portmanteau’.”

They continue to bicker like this all the way to the lab, then a brief pause to open the door to the lab, after which the bickering resumes. It’s nice in a way yelling insults at somebody shouldn’t be, but oh well.

*

You’ve known Mako for a few years before she actually enters the lab for the first time. She’s fifteen, if you remember it right, and you’ve been kind of doing the ‘cool aunt with tattoos’ thing with her for a little while. You’re the only woman on base who’s close to her age and almost always available for a chat while you grab more coffee to refuel. You think she’s met Helga a few times too, whenever the woman stomps angrily from the lab to aggressively track down any ginseng tea within a 50 mile radius, but you know for a fact she’s not been in the lab. That she’s not allowed in the lab.

You’re a little surprised when she turns up, but not much. She’s having a teen rebellion phase. You’re very proud.

Unfortunately, she walks in as you hurl a stapler at Helga while screaming, “ _Ich spreche Deutsch_ , shithead!”, but to her credit, she takes it very well. And in your defence, Helga was doing that thing where she mutters in German under her breath while doing angry math. Nobody does angry math like Helga Gottlieb.

“Hello Newt,” she says cheerfully. The stapler clatters against the blackboard, and Helga gives a put-upon sigh.

“Uh,” you say, “hi Mako. What can I do you for?”

“I want my ears pierced,” she says. You choke.

“You _what_?”

She doesn’t repeat herself – she’s a smart kid, knows a rhetorical question when she hears one. You frown.

“I thought Marshall Pentecost-” (you nearly say ‘your dad’ but you catch yourself just in time) “-told you couldn’t get any piercings.”

“That’s why I’ve come here,” Mako is smiling very sweetly, but you aren’t fooled. She is a devious little shit. God bless her.

You kick a stool towards her. “Take a seat then.”

Helga finally turns around. “Newton,” she says, aghast, “you cannot be serious.”

She only calls you Newton when you’re really fucking up. So, yeah, this might get you fired. In a world where Marshall Pentecost will openly admit to his affection for Mako Mori, this could be an issue. In reality, you’ll probably just get yelled at. Also, you’re kind of worried that Mako will try to pierce them herself if you don’t do it, and at least you’re handy with a needle.

“I’m never serious,” you tell your lab partner flippantly. Mako is sitting elegantly on a lab stool, God fucking knows how she’s doing _that_ , and you pick up a biro to mark the places where you’re going to stick a hot piece of metal. Yay, piercings!

Helga makes her way over, a little more stiffly than usual. You wonder if it’s been a bad morning. “Helga,” you say, cutting her off as she opens her mouth to speak, “I know what I’m doing. I did my own.”

Helga raises an eyebrow. “You pierced your own ears?”

You nod, distractedly. Mako doesn’t fidget like most kids her age, but it’s important to get these marks right. “And my bottom lip. And my eyebrow, but I’ll be honest, I kind of fucked that one up. Ears are a lot easier.”

Helga is very quiet over your shoulder, and you turn to look at her. She swallows when you meet her eyes.

“I didn’t know you had a lip piercing,” she says. Are you imagining it, or does she sound slightly strangled?

“Yeah,” you say carefully, not breaking eye contact.

“Has it closed?”

“No,” you say, in just the same tone as before.

“Hm.” Then she breaks eye contact because, “Oh for God’s sake Newt, these aren’t even at all.” She bends down and snatches the biro from your hand. “If you’re going to mutilate the girl, at least do it properly.”

While Helga is concentrating on her ears, Mako raises her eyebrows at you significantly. You signal her to cease and desist _immediately_ but she doesn’t stop until Helga stands and returns to her work, loudly announcing that she will have nothing more to do with this. Marshall Pentecost has raised a monster.

You pierce Mako’s ears and give her your own earrings to keep the holes open, and you get shouted at a lot by a Marshall who won’t admit exactly why he’s shouting at you, but your abiding memory of the whole incident is watching Helga Gottlieb’s pupils dilate while she stared at your mouth.

*

After that, you keep an eye out. You watch for little things that you might have taken as flirting in anybody else, and can’t find them. But you’re sure you’re right. You’re a biologist, you spend a lot of time thinking about sex, it’s practically your _job_. Also, you spent your college years hitting on anything with a pulse and human sex organs. You are sure Helga Gottlieb is attracted to you (you’re also sure you’re attracted to Helga Gottlieb but shhh, you don’t think about that. If you do then it stops becoming a fun puzzle and starts being something really scary).

You keep looking. You watch for little things that might be taken as flirting in Helga. And you think you find them – leaving interesting research articles where you will find them, rangers coming and telling you things without prompting from you but looking distinctly nervous, as if they’ve recently been threatened by a woman who could stare down God, and that time where you got the flu but wanted to keep working so you did until you passed out and woke up to Helga spraying your face with water and wearing a hospital mask and rubber gloves. She locked you out of the lab, but she slid your notes under the door behind you.

Everything comes to a head when you finally get clearance to work with Kaiju Blue again after your assistant stepped in some (apparently you weren’t deemed ‘responsible enough, what is this, high school?). You get a _tiny_ splash on your shirt and it immediately starts to eat away at the fabric. To your horror, the hole starts to spread until it’s getting dangerously close to your skin and you shuck the whole thing off in a panic, tearing the buttons off and momentarily forgetting you aren’t wearing a bra. By the time that realisation hits, your shirt is just a gently smoking scrap in your hands, getting smaller by the second. You literally can’t believe this. You cannot believe this is happening.

You fling the shirt on the floor and stamp on it in frustration. “Fuck my _life_!”

“What is it now?” Helga drawls from the opposite side of the room, and you freeze.

“Oh my God,” you choke out, “don’t turn round.”

She does, obviously, but at least you have the presence of mind to cross your arms over your chest. When she catches sight of you, the piece of chalk in her hand actually snaps in half.

“I told you not to turn around,” you offer, blushing.

She doesn’t say anything. It’s like somebody’s flicked a switch under her shapeless sweater vest and turned off her brain. She’s just _staring_ at you, and it’s starting to make you uncomfortable. Like, okay, you know you’re a little soft around the edges and that you probably look better with a shirt _on_ , but still.

“Could I borrow a shirt?” you ask, and Helga makes a very small noise. Looks like she’s coming back online. “I got a little blood on mine,” you joke weakly.

This seems to reboot her completely. “You colossal cretin,” she snarls, “must I do everything around here?”

She storms out of the room and slams the heavy door behind her. You really mean to just sit there quietly and regret your actions until she comes back, but then you get distracted by some of the numbers and something starts to make _sense_ , and before you know it you have a calculator between your teeth and pencils in both hands (because hello, ambidextrous) and when Helga comes back in she gives a sort of yell that reminds you that yep, still topless. Goddamn. Well, at least your back is to her.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll put the shirt on right away, it’s just that the DNA is the _same_ , Helga, holy shit-”

“Enough rambling,” Helga says wryly, and hands you the shirt. You take it and it just sort of hangs limply from one hand while you continue to write. There’s silence, and then a warm, bony hand on your spine. You go still immediately, but it’s a kind of sudden relaxation you didn’t know you needed, not the fight-or-flight instinct kicking in. Apparently, though, Helga can’t tell the difference, because her hand is gone.

“There’s a blank space,” she mutters by way of explanation and you nod, still absorbed in data.

“Yeah, well, I’m waiting for this fabled ‘Double Event’,” you tell her. Which you didn’t mean to tell her but hey, you’re topless and kaiju are clones of each other, lots of exciting things happening today.

She is quiet. Then, “I thought my work was ‘gross bullshit math that makes children cry’.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not right,” you grumble, blushing and pulling on her shirt. It smells of her, you realise. Fuck. That should not be as hot as it is. It’s a little big on you, and beige, and it falls off your shoulder like you’re a Twenties pin-up.

Helga is staring at you with intent. You swallow and return to your science. The thing is, now that you’re certain that if you kissed Helga right now she’d kiss you back, you’re not sure you want to. No, that’s not right: you want to kiss her. _Really badly_. You want to lift her up and put your hand in her hair and kiss her until she can’t breathe. You’re sure she wouldn’t object. But you’re kind of...feeling stuff. Stuff like, I’d really like to show her what’s left of my hometown. Maybe one day she can explain those equations to me. Maybe I can show her some of the music that makes my heart beat faster. Maybe I can get her to believe that I’d never leave her to face anything on her own. Maybe I love her.

And in that situation, casual sex is not the answer.

*

But then, as we all know, Hong Kong.

It all goes so _fast._ When you see Helga in her parka you laugh until you have to double over, so Helga’s already pissed off at you, snaps “I’ve told you not to call me that,” when you use her first name and leaves the ‘in front of people’ unsaid, and the meeting with Raleigh Beckett goes awfully, and Mako gives you a quiet smile that does absolutely nothing to stem the fact that you need to do some goddamned _work_.

And you do. You do work and you do stupid stuff that you can’t make yourself regret because the kaiju hivemind took your breath away, but you do wish Helga hadn’t been the one to find you. She screams your name at you, and you feel blood on your top lip and roaring in your ears, and you open your eyes. Helga’s face is blurry but it’s undeniably her and you smile, slurring like a drunk. “Hey. You’re here,” and one of your hands floats up enough to graze her jaw.

She kisses you like she wants to knock you out. She very nearly does.

Without further ado, she rushes off to find the Marshall, and then everything’s fast again, Hannibal Chau creeps the fuck out of you, you literally nearly get eaten by a baby, what a fucking joke, and then everything screeches to a halt when Helga offers to Drift with you.

You see a locked door, clear as day, in Helga’s head, and you see turmoil and shame and you want to reassure her but that’s chasing the rabbit and you don’t have _time_. There’s just not enough time.

*

Helga disappears during the celebrations. You want to drown your sorrows and also drink to the saving of the world, but you could have God knows what neural side-effects and introducing alcohol to the mix probably isn’t the best plan.

That doesn’t stop you letting Tendo Choi do a bodyshot off you, because he’s your buddy and that’s just something buddies do for each other.

You’re on your back on a cafeteria table, legs hanging off the end and shirt rucked up so far the bottom of your bra is visible – but it’s black and classy, so it’s all good. Tendo is straddling your hips with an eggcup full of shitty tequila and a bottle of lemon juice because who the fuck can find fresh lime in the Shatterdome? He pours salt on your stomach, which is hard because you keep laughing and it keeps bouncing off.

Tendo is laughing as well. “Okay, shit, I think I just got salt in your bellybutton.”

“Fuck you dude, unforgiveable,” you manage to gasp out between laughs. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Raleigh Becket looking bemused, and you slap Tendo on the shoulder.

“Don’t think your buddy likes me all that much,” you tell him, indicating Raleigh with a jerk of your head.

Tendo looks mortally offended and pretty drunk. “The hell is wrong with that boy, ain’t he never seen tattoos before?”

Tendo bends himself almost completely in half at the waist ( _holy shit,_ you think, _I am 99% sure this man could give himself a blowjob_ ) and, accompanied by wolfwhistles, licks the salt off your stomach. He downs the shot and squirts lemon juice into his mouth, and you cheer alongside everybody else.

You sit up, the J-Tech still on your lap. “Still straddling me, bro,” you remind him. He seems to have genuinely forgotten. All hail tequila.

He rolls himself sideways, into the waiting arms of some of the other technicians, who refill his eggcup. He salutes you with it, and disappears into the crowd. Watching him leave, you spot Helga coming towards you, fast as she can, with anger and a touch of fear in her eyes. You can feel her presence like a little buzz on the back on your neck. Residual Drift stuff, you guess, rubbing your neck absently.

You catch Helga doing the same, and her arms snaps rigidly to her side as soon as she sees you. She grabs onto your elbow and steers you through the crowd. The rapid tapping of her cane clears her a path, and you see sympathetic looks on quite a few people as she drags you away from the fun. You’re feeling a little mad yourself. It’s kind of humiliating, like your parents picking you up from a house party and clucking disapprovingly all the way home.

“What are you doing?” you hiss at her, keeping calm.

Helga is pretty much the opposite of calm. “I think you’ve had enough,” she growls, and gives you one last shove which sends you out into an empty corridor. The cafeteria door shuts, the sounds of celebration are cut off, and the silence is heavy with something. Anger mostly, you think.

“‘Had enough?’” you almost yell. “I’m not even drinking, you giant stick in the mud! Had enough _fun_ , is that what you’re saying?”

Helga falters, for the first time since you saw her tonight. “I thought-”

“Jesus,” you sigh. “I’m not a fucking idiot. I’m not going to get intoxicated just a couple hours after Drifting with an alien monster.”

“You have to admit,” Helga says with the barest hint of a smile, “that does sound like something you would do.”

You shake your head, and you think of how _scared_ she’d been when she found you on the floor, fitting and bleeding. “Not anymore,” you tell her.

Helga seems to remember something. “You’re sober. And you let Tendo Choi do...whatever it is he did.”

“A bodyshot?” You shrug. “Yeah, we’re friends. Did you see how flexible he is? Christ.”

“Hm. A very friendly observation.” She turns away from you. “I’m sure you’d prefer to get back to him.”

“Nah,” you say easily. “I’d rather be with you.”

You know it’s a loaded statement. You can’t see her face, but her knuckles whiten as she grips her cane.

“Don’t,” she says shortly.

“Don’t what?” You’re on thin ice here, you don’t know what you’re doing, but you really don’t want to fuck up. You hope enthusiasm can make up for lack of knowledge.

Her spine stiffens. “Don’t make fun of me.” Suddenly, she whirls on you. “I have experienced this before – ‘oh, poor dyke Helga, pathetic crush on her lab partner’ – and it was hardly enjoyable! I would thank you to spare me the indignity!”

She’s so angry that her hair is a little mussed, and you can barely stand it.

“I’m not - ” you try, but she barrels over you.

“Forget what happened before. I was – I was frightened, and full of adrenaline. It won’t happen again.”

You make a low, wounded sort of noise, because the only words you can think of only skirt the problem or confuse it. There are no words for how your heart and stomach are all tangled and how much you want to make it all right. You don’t know what to do.

You take a tentative step towards her, and another, and rest a hand on top of hers on her cane. “What if...” you lick your lips. “What if I wanted it to happen again?”

“Newt...” she sounds in _pain_ , and it’s awful, so you kiss her.

She trembles under your lips and for a moment you think she really didn’t want this, but then she pulls back and murmurs, “My leg, I can’t,” and you understand. Carefully, you guide her hands to your hips, you waist, and you let her lean on you. Her cane is still in her hands, hanging at the small of your back, but she rests her weight on you. Trusts you.

“Comfortable?” you ask and when she nods, you lean in to kiss her again.

Everything feels like it has come together perfectly. You cradle her skull with one hand, mess up her hair as much as possible, and when she tries to return the favour you have to pull back because, “Mind the pencils, also there might be sharper things, just be careful,” and she grumbles something about a scarecrow, and then laughs into your mouth when you kiss her again. It’s the best moment of your life, probably. The pencils scatter on the floor, your glasses bump against her nose, so you move down to press kisses to her jaw. She breathes out hard, and fists her hands in your shirt. When you bite a mark into the side of her neck, she actually swears, and you make some very embarrassing noises of your own.

Suddenly, you are very aware that you are in a corridor literally just outside the entire partying population of the Shatterdome. “Come to bed with me,” you murmur into her ear, and she scrapes her teeth experimentally along your neck in return.

“Of course,” she tells you, raggedly. “Of course.”

*

Getting there is difficult, but so worth it when you can shut your door, and be alone with her. It’s just like the lab. It’s nothing like the lab. You give a moment of thanks that you have yet to put up any kaiju posters, because you always have to turn them to face the wall when you have sex, and you aren’t interested in delaying this at all.

Helga sits on the bed and digs her fingers viciously into her thigh. You take a break from unlacing your shoes to scurry over to her, and to crouch on the floor next her, worrying at your lip. You don’t know how to _help_ , which is frustrating, so you just sit back on your heels. “Is it bad?” you ask softly.

“No,” she replies immediately. You touch her knee gently, one fingertip.

“It’s a little painful,” Helga amends softly, and cups your face with her hand in a gesture so tender and hesitant, it makes you want to cry. “But I am fine to carry on.”

“Good,” you say, smiling, and begin to take her shoes off. She makes some noise of protest, but quietens when you smile at her, all lop-sided. When you’re done, she grabs you by the shoulder and drags you up and _kisses_ you. Her nails leave little stings of pain where she grips your neck, and you run your hands gently across her ribs and her spine and you love her. You know that now. It ought to stop you.

You pull back, you fully intend to do something, but all you can do is look into her eyes (she suddenly looks frightened, oh God) and say, “Hey, get yourself comfy.”

She frowns at you. You sigh a little, and rake your hair away from your face. “I want to have sex with you,” you clarify, and she blushes. “I’m guessing you’re down with that?”

Her mouth quirks. “Quite.”

“Well,” you give an exasperated little smile, because you aren’t explaining this well. “I don’t want you to be in pain, right? At least, I don’t want you to be in unsexy pain. No judging. I totally get sexy pain, believe me. But-”

Helga looks like she’s torn between laughing at you and tearing your clothes off. It’s a good look on her.

You smile again. “Do whatever you need to do to keep your leg happy. I’ll work around you.” You stand up, giving her the space to manoeuvre. Meanwhile, you shed your shirt and skirt, and kick off your shoes. Your lingerie is pretty tatty, but you started wearing all black a while ago, and it’s very forgiving. For someone who wasn’t expecting other people to be naked with you today, you look good.

Helga is lying with a pillow under her bad knee and all her clothes on. The latter is unacceptable. You crawl onto the bed, straddle her as carefully as you know how. “Tell me straight away if it hurts,” you murmur, and then you kiss her like you mean it.

You hit a few snags. It’s inevitable. Sex with someone new is never perfect, even if you think _they’re_ perfect – you know that. At first, Helga keeps her hands above your shoulders like she’s not allowed to go any further, or like she’s scared to, and it takes you gasping, “Please, just touch me,” into the place where her neck meets her shoulder before she’ll grab hold of your hips, and scratch bright lines down your back. You’re already down to your underwear, she’s taken off her shirt, but when your hands drift towards her waistband she pushes you away. “You won’t like what you see,” she warns you, looking heavy with experience. You press a kiss to her lowest rib. “I nearly died without kissing you,” you whisper, just loud enough to hear. “Nothing about your body scares me, except not being able to touch it.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, you feel flayed open as soon as the words leave your mouth, but it works. You can always blame the pheromones, later.

The scarring is bad. The way Helga looks at you like you’re about to storm out in disgust is worse. You run a hand over them, kiss the hipbone right at the top. You wonder how they got there, but you don’t ask.

And after, when you’re sleepy and happy, she simply wriggles the blanket down without disturbing her leg atop its pillow, and throws it over the both of you. She looks you in the eye as if daring you to leave.

“Shit,” you mutter after a moment. “Have to turn the light out.”

So then you have to get up out of the nice warm bed and turn off the stupid light and by the time you traipse back to bed Helga looks slightly as if she wants to bolt, and you feel like screaming.

“Hey,” you say lightly instead, worming your way back alongside her in the dark. “You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

As an experiment, you flop on your front and drape an arm across her waist. She doesn’t push you off. “To my eternal chagrin,” she laments instead. You grin into the pillow.

“Who even says ‘chagrin’?”

Helga sniffs imperiously. “The cultured.”

Her dignity is ruined as you snuggle closer and tuck your head against her chest. She rolls her eyes so hard you can practically hear it.

“Okay?” you ask.

“Absolutely,” she reassures you, a little stiltedly, but she runs her fingers through your hair.

“Good,” you tell her smugly, “because I wasn’t planning on moving.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“You’re insufferable.”

Then, with the niceties over, they sleep.

*

You wake first, the next morning. Not something you were planning on, but definitely something you can work with. You’re pretty much physically incapable of lying around in bed once you’re awake, though, even entangled with the woman you’ve probably loved for like two years if you’re totally honest with yourself. She looks beautiful when she sleeps. Kinder. You run a thumb over her cheekbone, and check quickly that her leg didn’t fall into some kind of awkward position in the night and isn’t going to cramp up or something. You don’t know what you would do if everything wasn’t fine, but it is, so you think you’ve done the right thing.

You slip out of bed and tug on a T-shirt and some jeans (underwear and shoes are for suckers), and then you go in search of coffee. And ginseng tea.

You find both in the cafeteria, as well as dream team Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket. They have their heads together, whispering, and you’d happily leave them in peace, but Mako pipes up: “Two cups of coffee this morning, Newt?”

Raleigh laughs, his full-throated chuckle. “Bad hangover, Doc?”

And you’re tired enough to reply, “Nah, one of them’s tea for...um, someone.” You stutter out the last few words as you realise that this thing you have might not even be still on this morning, let alone something Helga wants spread over the entire Shatterdome.

Mako takes in your dishevelled appearance with the same raised eyebrows she had at fifteen. “Ginseng tea, Newt?” she asks sweetly. You flee.

When you return to your room, Helga is sitting up in bed with her head in her hands. You feel the beginnings of that special kind of revelation, the one that tells you that you’ve really fucked it up this time, when she looks up.

“I brought you tea,” you say uselessly, and hold out the mug towards her.

Everything in her face softens and settles and she holds out a beckoning hand, imperious. For once in your life, you do as you’re told, settling next to her on the bed (she has the sheet pulled up around her chest, like a movie star), and handing her the tea. After a moment, she leans her head on your shoulder like it’s nothing, and your breath catches in your chest. You nearly tell her you love her, but you think she knows, and the quiet is too precious. You rest your head on hers instead. It makes drinking your coffee difficult, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

You think of the last words of the last Harry Potter book. _All was well_. When you were a kid you thought that was a dumb ending, a cop-out, a total letdown after a story so full of blood and death and meaning.

You were wrong, you think, breathing in the smell of ginseng and her hair.

All is well.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i would just like to apologise for any mess-ups re: characters, timelines, typos, etc, since this was totally unbeta'd. also, the first time i've written anything resembling porn, so i apologise for that as well probably.


End file.
